Ps. 13 (hope overtaking)

The most important line in the psalm is when the psalmist demands from Yhwh, “Look! Answer me! O Yhwh, my God!”. One might say that this is the final deafening, and demanding “knock” of, “knock, and the door shall be opened to you.” It is preceded by the no less subtle ‘knocks’ of “How long…” in verses 1-2, all of which are, in reality, demands, not questions.

 

However, although that line is the most important, the key to the line is actually found in comparing it to the opening line of the psalm. There, the psalmist ‘asks’ “How long O Yhwh? Will you forget me forever?” The Name, as in many psalms, is referred to in the very first line. Here, psalmist inserts the Name into the midst of his agonized cry, attempting to draw Yhwh’s presence into his affliction in order to reverse it. For him, time has derailed. Without the Presence, time is chaotic; it is ‘forgotten’ time and it exhibits all the characteristics of a state of existence apart from the Presence—incoherence, confusion, oppression and death.

 

When the psalmist again refers to the Name, however, he will add an important phrase to it, “O Yhwh my God.” This small phrase turns the psalm around from despair to one of impervious hope. The phrase “my God’ calls to mind the covenantal bond between Yhwh and his people, “You shall be my people, and I shall be your God.” Yhwh is his name, but he is Israel’s God, wed to them with bonds of loving-kindness and faithfulness. It is this covenantal bond that opens up the sphere within which the psalmist can demand that Yhwh listen to him, turn his Face toward him and deal with him ‘bountifully’. It is this covenant sphere that makes possible the powerful assurance of the closing lines. Notice how the closing lines are covenantal in shape: “But I have trusted in your lovingkindness. My heart shall rejoice in your deliverance. I shall sing praises to Yhwh, as soon as he has dealt bountifully with me.”

 

The covenant is not a sphere within which man has no claim on Yhwh, within which there can be no demanding “knock”. In fact, within this covenantal sphere, we witness the expectation of bountiful deliverance. Within this sphere the “heart that experienced grief day and night”(vs 2)  is turned into a “heart that shall rejoice in your deliverance.” (vs. 5).  It is a sphere within which the ‘rejoicing of the enemy’ (vs 4) will be turned into a ‘rejoicing in your deliverance.’ (vs. 5). The liturgy of chaos will turn into the liturgy of Yhwh.

 

We might say it this way—when Yhwh covenanted himself to his people (when they could add “my God” to Yhwh), he gave birth to them. They became constituted as covenant people, a people whose very structure was encased within the faithfulness of Yhwh (from the bottom to the top and from ‘the east to the west’). Their enemy would be Yhwh’s enemy and Yhwh’s enemy (Death) would be theirs. As a covenant people they could speak Yhwh’s faithfulness back to him in the form of demand without that demand somehow lessening their sense that Yhwh’s response is always-already a response that overwhelms them in its bounty and makes them erupt in rejoicing and singing praise. It also, for this very reason, provides the space within which, in a span of 5 verses, the psalmist can move into a hope and expectation that overwhelms his despair.